Bears Blitz

Published by Gary Davenport on December 5, 2014
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears

A 2014 season that began with promise for the Chicago Bears has come completely off the rails. After falling to the Dallas Cowboys on Thursday night, the 5-8 Bears are effectively left just playing out the string.

Injury was added to insult in the game. Star wide receiver Brandon Marshall suffered broken ribs and a collapsed lung after taking a brutal shot from Dallas safety Barry Church, and the ninth-year veteran’s 2014 campaign is over.

Now, with one of the Bears’ dynamic duo of wide receivers on the shelf for the remainder of a lost 2014 season, it’s high time the Bears did something that’s been long overdue in Chicago.

It’s time for the Bears to get it in gear on the ground.

Simply put, the Bears’ lack of dedication to running the ball in 2014 has been as baffling as it was ill-advised. The Bears have one of the league’s best dual-threat running backs in Matt Forte. The seventh-year veteran was coming off a career-high 1,339 rushing yards in 2013.

So, as Bleacher Report NFC North Lead Writer Zach Kruse points out, the logical thing to do was throw the run game into the garbage:

A season ago, the Bears averaged 4.5 yards per carry and went 7-4 when rushing for over 100 yards in a game. Chicago was 3-0 when rushing for 149 or more.

Forte had arguably his best season ever rushing the football. He carried 289 times for 1,339 yards and nine scores, finishing second in the NFL in yards, 20-yard carries (nine) and first-down runs (74), sixth in touchdowns and ninth in yards per carry (4.6). He was the most impressive back in the league not named LeSean McCoy.

This season, Forte is averaging 3.99 yards per carry. He is on pace to rush for just 1,051 yards, and he has just one carry over 20 yards. Meanwhile, Forte has hauled in 86 passes as a receiver—putting him on pace for almost 106 receptions—as the Chicago offense has become increasingly pass-heavy.

It makes no sense. Not only have the Bears under-utilized Forte on the ground this year, but in abandoning the run (the Bears rank 26th in the NFL in rushing attempts in 2014), the Bears also abandoned any hope of controlling the clock or the tempo in games.

You know, in a way that would keep Chicago’s dumpster fire of a defense off the field.

Then there’s the matter of Jay Cutler, he of the back-breaking turnover. Perhaps there wouldn’t have been quite so many of those had head coach Marc Trestman not dialed up pass play after pass play after pass play despite the presence of a Pro Bowl ball-carrier in the backfield.

Heading into Thursday night’s game, Trestman told Michael C. Wright of ESPN.com that things were going to be different in Week 14:

We’re just trying to get some balance in our offense. We’ve got to take the mistakes we made last week and turn them into a positive this week. One of the things we know we have to do is we have to attempt to run the ball more. As I said to our team, ‘We don’t have to run the ball for 7 yards a carry.’ Running the football has a residual effect on a lot of different things. It helps your movement game. It helps your play-action game. We all know these things. We didn’t get it done last week. We admit to that, and we have to move forward.

Then the game started, and the run game went out the window. Forte carried the ball 13 times for 26 yards against the Cowboys, and after the game was over, it was time for Trestman to dig back through his increasing pile of excuses, according to John Mullin of CSN Chicago.

“We only had 20 plays in the first half,” Trestman countered. “We tried to run the football. They were certainly making every effort to stop the run.”

The thing is, there is no excuse.

It’s not like the Bears offensive line has been unable to open any holes on the ground for Forte. According to Football Outsiders, the Bears front ranks eighth in the NFL in run blocking this year.

That’s higher than the Houston Texans and New York Jets, both of whom rank inside the top five in the NFL in rushing this season.

No, the choice to eschew the run was little more than a strategic decision by the pass-happy Trestman, and it’s time the Bears head coach admitted that decision was a mistake.

It’s no coincidence that the Bears are 2-1 in games that Forte carried the ball more than 20 times, and while it may be too late for the Bears to make a playoff push, the team can still salvage a .500 season and some measure of respectability.

There’s also the matter of Trestman‘s job security. Mullin wrote that “Barring a catastrophic, franchise-embarrassing final four games, Trestman is generally expected to be given a third year to try to get this Bears thing fixed.”

If the Bears are going to avoid that catastrophe, they’re going to need Forte more than ever, and not only because Marshall is hurt.

The Bears still have home tilts left with the New Orleans Saints and Detroit Lions, teams more than capable of moving the ball on Chicago’s paper-mache defense.

That brings us back to controlling the clock and tempo, which brings us back to Forte.

Yes, the Lions are the most difficult team in the NFL to run on. But the Saints (23rd) and Minnesota Vikings (24th) most certainly are not.

Frankly, these next three weeks will go a long way toward telling us whether retaining Trestman is really in the Bears’ best interests.

If he’s willing to admit that he erred in leaving Forte in the garage much of the season, then fine—give the guy another year to show that he’s more the 2012 version of Trestman the coach and less this season’s mess.

However, if Trestman continues his pass-wacky ways even after Marshall’s injury, then odds are the losses are going to keep piling up.

And at that point, the Bears are going to have a decision to make.

Because if that’s the case, maybe being a head coach in the NFL really isn’t Marc Trestman‘s forte.

Gary Davenport is an NFL Analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and the Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter @IDPManor.

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